


Good Apples

by certs_up



Category: Chrono Trigger
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Gen Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:31:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/certs_up/pseuds/certs_up
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marle and Lucca want to see Magus and Frog overcome their differences. Old enemies, however, have to do things their own way. Includes backstory for Frog's archaic dialect. Treat for Yuletide 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Apples

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wren Truesong (waywren)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywren/gifts).



The girls had started it. Magus had seen through them from the first, of course--not just because they were simple-minded humans, but because they were children, really. Even Marle, as she insisted on calling herself, hadn't seen enough of palace life to finesse a proper intrigue or execute a queenly mendacity. She was always smiling a little too brightly when she was the one who asked: "Frog--oh, and Magus? Could you gather firewood tonight?"

And he and Frog would glance briefly at each other and wander into the forest ... in opposite directions.

Lucca at least had a talent for covering her plots with a strategic facade. "Magus, nobody ever tries to haggle with you when you make an offer, so you're the logical choice to go to the market for supplies. And Frog, he's going to need someone to carry things; you can go with him."

And he and Frog had exchanged quick glances before striding and hopping, respectively, toward the town--without a single word passing between them throughout the whole trip.

Magus always kept his distance from the others, resting outside the little circle they formed about the embers of the fire, or making his way down the road a short stone's throw from the group. Even from his position well to the rear, however, he'd been the first to notice the fruit on a good-sized tree spreading its branches at the roadside.

"Apples!" Marle had exclaimed, though not until she was practically on top of it. "I love apples! We can roast them over the fire tonight." Passers-by had of course already seen to all the fruit within a princess's reach, so she turned to her companions. "Frog--Magus--I'm sure between the two of you, you can pick a lot, right?"

He and Frog hadn't even exchanged glances. Frog simply gave a leap into the foliage, grabbed an apple, and pulled it down. At Frog's second jump for a single fruit, Magus had sniffed and let loose with a blast of magic that swept every apple off its branch--with a more-than-coincidental number of them thudding right onto Frog's cranium.

Magus hadn't joined in the rest of the party's laughter, but he'd allowed his lips to tighten.

That had at any rate gotten him and the amphibian exchanging more than glances. Frog had rubbed that great green expanse that passed for a head and commented, "Thou'rt a shrewder harvester than I, Magus. But meseems thy aim is lacking, for none of thy missiles did strike a vital spot."

Magus was not going to let that ninny get the last word. "Someone's still got to pick them up, so hop to it."

It wasn't until the others started laughing again--albeit more self-consciously than usual--that he realized he'd inadvertently made a joke, himself.

Well, that had all been a long time ago. And Frog, frankly, was still a joke. Magus could never decide which was worse: the absurd form that was really neither man nor frog, or the outlandish speech that the creature affected, with its obscure vocabulary and elaborate inflectional endings.

"Why do you speak in such a ridiculous way?" he'd finally demanded, after a day when "thou art" and "methinks" had worn thin. "You never talked that way to Cyrus."

"Aye, but I was a different man then. Or, more properly, I was a man then."

Magus crossed his arms, scowling. "You can't pin this one on me. The transformation affected only your physical form. You could have settled for looking like a frog without sounding like--like--"

"A storybook knight, think'st thou? But this is the speech I learned from the company that this form did bring me into, for there are noble beasts with their own noble speech, and as I had a form like unto their own, they would speak to me and teach me their ways. And in the long ten years that I have borne this form and no human did wish for my company, they would call me their fellow. They would spar with me when I feared my blade otherwise would grow rusty, and they would have me at their butts--"

"WHAT?!"

Frog laughed his oddly trilling laugh. "That is the word of their tongue, but at archery, thou would'st say. So we would have our bows and arrows, and the livelong day we would spend seeking the bull's eye, or making true the shafts and fletching them--well, but this is mere babble. But in those years did I learn their ways and their speech, and that I have taken for mine own. And that is why, when we met again, that I said I rather enjoy this form, for in it have I learned what I might ne'er have learned had I been a man and in the shadow of Cyrus."

Now it was their own campfire that cast shadows. The ragtag gaggle that had cloven their way through his castle's defenses and interfered with his summoning were once more dispersed. Having completed the quest that drew them together, they had returned to their own eras. As had he. Yet in his case, one quest had given way to another. The evil that was Lavos had been brought to an end, but Lavos had wrought an evil that Magus would set right even if it cost him his life, even if it cost him his soul.

Even, for that matter, if it brought him into the company of an amphibian who talked like a storybook knight.

He was still puzzled that Frog would have anything to do with him, never mind actually keep him company on his strange and personal quest. There were superficial explanations. Yes, Magus was one of the few people who wouldn't stare at what Glenn had become--Magus was, after all, hardly in a position to look askance at his own handiwork. And yes, they'd come to some sort of understanding as they roasted apples over the fire, each watching the other and pointedly not trying to emulate him. Magus had been bored, wanting to refine the subtleties of his magic, and with gesture and voice he whetted that sometimes-visible force so he could roast his apples without burning either the fruit or his hands. (Present company had led him to reflect that this was a trickier task than simply burning an enemy to ashes.) Frog, meanwhile, embarked on a similar endeavor with his own apples using a humble stick. The result in either case was messy and sweet and surprisingly enjoyable, and when they looked at the ground or the flames rather than each other, their embarrassment was over full cheeks and juice-damp faces, not the circumstances of their first meeting.

All the same, it was one thing to bear each other's company for the sake of a goal larger than oneself. it was quite another to follow a man who'd subjected one to a monstrous and life-altering curse, and had done so merely on a whim.

Magus didn't like to admit it, but it was humbling, though hardly the first humbling aspect of this whole adventure. Defeated by humans, fallen before Lavos, and whatever had possessed him to travel with the lowly creatures that walked the earth? Perhaps it was the closest he could come, now, to his position as commander in chief of the army of Mystics. He had been born to rule, after all, and while Crono's ill-assorted company wasn't worth actually ruling, he nonetheless lorded it over them with his superior knowledge. None of their number would have known the powers of Gaspar, the Guru of Time, and, lacking that knowledge, they might have circled the eons endlessly without recovering their companion. He had directed them to Gaspar ostensibly for the sake of their own quest, but having embarked on it with them, he realized that seeing their task fulfilled might be a sign that another who had vanished could be recovered...

Magus had pulled himself so deeply into his thoughts that he didn't see what smacked him literally between the eyes, knocking him off the fallen tree trunk that he'd made his seat and landing him flat on his back in the leaves.

He glared up at Frog. "Hit me with that tongue again and I'll pull it out by the roots."

"Thou would'st deprive a frog of his tongue?"

"What I bestowed, I can recover," Magus told him dryly. But when Frog extended a hand, he hesitated only a moment before grasping that cool, sword-callused surface and letting himself be pulled upright.

**Author's Note:**

> Butts (singular) is a medieval term for an archery range.


End file.
